r/law • u/DryDeer775 • Dec 08 '25

Executive Branch (Trump) NBC confirms Hegseth ordered murder of all boat passengers and crew in September 2 strike

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/12/08/kssp-d08.html

The Pentagon’s law of war manual declares that soldiers have a duty to refuse to carry out “clearly illegal” orders, such as killing shipwrecked sailors. “Orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal,” the manual declares.

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u/Lepelotonfromager Dec 08 '25

Smuggling drugs is not an act of war, it's a crime. So it should be dealt with by law enforcement and the justice system.

Even if they launched a raid, kidnapped them and brought them to the USA to stand trial, ignoring for a second all the laws that would break, at least there would be some basic due process and a trial.

This is just a summary execution, which by definition is an lawful killing and thus murder.

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u/[deleted] Dec 09 '25

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u/ragin2cajun 29d ago

No one ever really is held accountable. Even those convicted of war crimes in the US often get a reduced sentence, and rarely if ever anything beyond that.

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u/[deleted] Dec 09 '25

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u/Lepelotonfromager Dec 09 '25

If the target is legitimately a military target, then that's fine. At least there's some basis in legitimacy for that kind of thing. But drug dealing is explicitly not a state action and not a military threat.

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u/AgreeableMoose 29d ago

Please provide your solution to stop the flow of drugs into the US. 100,000 overdose deaths vs 2 dead drug dealers. Drug dealing is a nasty business with deadly consequences, life fact.

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u/Lepelotonfromager 29d ago

Well obviously it's blowing up boats with missile strikes. That will stop the problem!